Emotional intelligence is defined as the skill of discerning your feelings and that of others, and using emotional cues to guide your own behavior, thoughts, and decisions.
For business-owners who are running a call center, having emotional intelligence is important.
For one thing, you are dealing with many people day in and day out. You will need to have empathy and the ability to understand them in order to build and maintain positive relationships.
Here are 3 reasons why emotional intelligence is essential in running a call center.
1. Keeping Your Customers Happy
As a business-owner with representatives that receive calls from your customers, you want to make sure that your customers will have great experience when contacting your company.
That means you will need to know what makes them happy and what will likely make them angry.
By having the ability to empathize with your customers can help you work out action plans that can manage hold time, speed up processes, and make an effective call flow.
Furthermore, you will need to find ways keep your callers engaged, address their complaints efficiently, and turn an ugly experience around.
In addition, if you are running an outsourcing call center company, you will not only be responsible in dealing with callers but also with client companies who avail of your services.
They are your customers too.
Therefore, you will require emotional intelligence to meet or exceed their expectations of your services, to communicate with them openly, and to anticipate their ever-changing business needs.
2. Managing Your Representatives
Another area in operating a call center that emotional intelligence is necessary is with the people who are working for you: your representatives.
They are the engine of your business because they interact with your customers on the phone daily.
Moreover, they are expected to meet key performance targets such as customer survey ratings, average call handling time, or sales quota.
In the case of outsourcing call center company, they are asked to not only follow the rules of your business but also the specific guidelines given by your clients.
Crucially, you will need to use emotional intelligence to keep them motivated to perform all the tasks that they are given.
3. Ensuring a Thriving Workplace
Lastly, emotional intelligence is instrumental in keeping a thriving workplace.
For example, your call center representatives experience burn-out on a daily basis in dealing with emotionally-draining conversations and irate customers which can lead to high attrition, tardiness, absences, and poor performance.
Thus, you need to be sensitive in knowing their current disposition so you can do something about it such as coming up with exciting activities, contests, games, and programs.
Moreover, establishing a great organizational culture with your supervisors and managers will also require emotional intelligence.
They will be responsible in directly dealing with the various issues that your representatives are facing at work.
Empathizing with your frontline employees, knowing their needs, and working with the members of your leadership team can make you effectively cultivate a culture that keeps your workplace environment positive and productive.
Conclusion
In managing a call center, you will be spending much of your time thinking of ways to better serve your customers, your representatives, and your leadership team. Possessing a well-developed emotional intelligence will help you turn it into a successful organization.